The She Beast (La Sorella di Satana/The Revenge of the Blood Beast/Satan's Sister/El Lago de Satán, 1965-1966)

To the left US Dark Sky Films DVD edition; to the right the Spanish Vial of Delicatessen DVD




According to the academic bore Phil Hardy in his Encyclopedia of Horror this snoozefest contains scenes of enormous power ? WTF ! I must have
missed them then because i certainly saw NO scenes of any power in this failed attempt of making a farsical horror, but maybe .... just maybe, Roman
Polanski saw this clunker and decide to make a much better farsical horror some year later with his classic The Fearless Vampire Killers ?
The ending scene of She Beast with "I'll be Back" somewhat resembles the ending scene of the Polanski film with the vampire virus being spread to the
rest of the world, and here with the evil re-animated witch saved from the lake and going outside of Transylvania to do her evil deeds.

To make things worse, the only reason to watch this film - Barbara Steele, disappears from the film almost immediately (with the car crash) just to return
at the end of it. That was disappointing and the Encyclopedia says that this very lowgrade production only had access to Steele for 4 days of shooting.
And NO, the drowning scene of the hysterically shrieking witch Vardella played by a huge and obviously male stuntman was more annoying than
powerful to me. Boy, was that an ugly witch and played strictly for comedy it may work, for some.

But ONE thing this film for sure has .... is a lot of alternative titles -
The She Beast / La Sorella di Satana / Il Lago di Satana / Satan's Sister / The Revenge of the Blood Beast / El Lago de Satán /Carnaval de Sangre, and
El Enterrador y sus colegas

I'll be Back!

Yes, an odd lowbudget horror-comedy that's neither scary nor funny. But, Barbara Steele is in it for some minutes, i'll give it that.
In the "real" direction debut for legendary and sadly died too young director Michael "Witchfinder General" Reeves a british couple is travelling in
Transylvania, Veronica (Barbara Steele) och Phillip (Ian Ogilvy) without knowing what lurks in the nearby lake.
Filmed in Italy this is supposed to take place in today Transylvania, Roumania.

An old fart, some count (John Carlsen) has found out that an evil witch, Varella, has been killed by the villagers 200 years earlier, drowned in a lake.
The young couple have an accident with their car, crashes into that lake and Veronica dies, maybe. Phillip roams around the village of Vaubrac with
Van Helsing, the old man, and there's the supposedly funny hotel owner, Groper (Mel Welles) and somewhere Lucretia Love can be seen too (and
she can be seen i.a. as one of the victims in the pretty cool giallo "The Killer Reserved Nine Seats" some 8-9 years later.

The 2009 US Dark Sky Films DVD edition was presented in anamorphic widescreen with an english mono audio, a picture gallery and a nice audio
commentary by producer Paul M. Maslansky, Ian Ogilvy and the legendary Barbara Steele herself, telling us about her amazing career in Italian film.

The 2016 Spanish Vial of Delicatessen DVD is presented in anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1 and with an english audio 2.0, theatrical trailer. Region 2

 

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